Come On, Get Higher
by jukeboxjunkiee
Summary: Isabella Swan is the town rebel. With the chief of police as her father and a town as small as they get, how will she ever get what she wants? And how will one family fix what she thought could never be whole? ExB/AxJ/EmxR/CxEs


"**Drugs are a bet with your mind." – Jim Morrison**

**Come On, Get Higher**

Chapter One - Give It All

"So… you want another?" Another what… another life? Another family? Another joint? Another addiction? Yes, I wanted all of that.

"Sure, give it to me." Jake passed me the weed, not that he had used any. Jake, my best friend since we were in diapers, was what most people call 'goody two shoes'. I just called it being smart, and me, I most definitely was not smart. I was Bella Swan, 'drug' addict, local 'rebel', and teenage disappointment.

I was not an addict. I chose to simply smoke it so my life would be easier. Getting high, as some people put it, was simply a feeling, a feeling that made living easier to face. It was a hobby, not an addiction. I could stop anytime I pleased.

And being a rebel, well that was completely misunderstood. In a town such as Forks, where everyone has known everyone since the beginning of time and everyone is strange because of the lack of sunlight, a rebel meant being out of the house at ten thirty at night and not having the best grades in the world.

Being a teenage disappointment wasn't the correct term. More like 'not using your full potential' as the school guidance counselor Mr. Shuler would put it. So maybe I wasn't the best student in the world and the law didn't seem to mean anything to me, I was still the daughter of the police chief of Forks, Washington, which meant my actions where closely monitored and reported.

That didn't mean I was being a good girl and doing everything I was told. I still found a way to evade the law, and I was never caught, never. The only person who knew was Jake, but he didn't count.

"Bells, you've got to stop this sometime. You're going downhill fast. I don't want to see you in jail soon." Jail. Right now, that sounded like a great place right now. Food. Showers. People. No family. Strangers. Alone time. No drugs, no jail.

"Jake, I can stop when I want to. It's not an addiction; you should know that by now. This town has made me crazy and if I don't get out soon, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go all mental on you."

"I bet you can't stop smoking for a week without going crazy." Bets were my downfall. Wherever there was a risk, no matter how small, I took it. And betting, well that seemed to be the biggest risk I could find in Forks.

"Deal. I win and you can't complain anymore about this bullshit of me going downhill."

"And if I win, you've got to quit. Forever." Forever didn't seem like such a long time. There were other ways to get my high, other ways to defy the lifestyle Charlie thought he could give me. I had plenty of time for forever, whether I wanted it or not.

"Perfect." I stuck my hand out, waiting for Jake to make the bet official. He seemed a little hesitant. "Aww… scared you're going to lose to a girl Jakey?"

"Not at all." And with that the bet had begun. "So, Bells, if you're done here, want to go down to the beach?" La Push beach was the only beach I knew of here, and rarely had anyone gone there. With the cold weather and rainy afternoons, the beach was a deserted stretch of sand and shore.

"Why not?"

'Why not' was my answer for everything. I had heard on this commercial for used cars. "Instead of saying 'Why does it cost that much' or 'Why can't it go faster', say 'Why not.'" And so began the era of why not.

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Today was one of the few days that it did not rain in Forks and my thoughts about the beach being deserted were entirely wrong for the moment. Parents had brought their little ones out to play in the sand, teenagers had been surfing in the ocean, and the old couple that lived next to Jake were sitting on a log looking around watching the world go by.

If only I could be one of those people. The world had come into perspective for me a long time ago. It was a cruel and unforgiving place, where the good were punished and the evil forgiven. Life was just a game, a game that no one would ever win. After all, we have to die sometime.

"Bella… Isabella…. Belly?" Jake was waving his hand in front of my face and from the looks of it he had been calling my name for a while.

"Jakey-Poo, what do you want?" He hated that name almost as much I hate Belly.

"You okay? You've been staring at that rock over there for almost half an hour." Truthfully, I didn't even notice there was anything in front of me.

"Half an hour? Yeah, I'm fine." Had I really been thinking that long?

"Bells, you sure you're okay? You're not thinking about quitting that bet are you?" He knew I never quit, even if I lost I never quit. It was a distraction and I thanked him for it.

"You wish. I think you're just getting in your fill of bugging me about the weed for when you lose." Yeah, maybe I wasn't so sure I was going to win. I mean, if I couldn't smoke my marijuana, what else was there to do in this po-dunk town? I wanted to have fun, and shit, if losing a bet was going to get me fun I didn't care.

But truthfully, I did care, because if I lost that bet, I lost my fun. I lost the only thing I'd had in Forks to rebel with and I'd be damned if some teenaged boy was going to take that away from me. There was some part of, just I tiny piece in the back of my head that wanted me to lose this bet on purpose. It kept screaming at me that this was the chance to turn my life around, a chance that maybe, for the first time, I'd be willing to take for myself.

Some people might say just lose the bet now, have your fun, and go back afterwards, the boy won't really care. But he would. And so would I.

I may be a lot of things, but a cheater wasn't one of them. Which is why I always found myself in crappy situations.

"Oh come on Bella, don't you actually want to live to reach the of fifty? I mean, you're not going to get anywhere with what you're doing." Did I want to live to the age of fifty? No, I didn't. I didn't want to live to be old and wrinkly, to have memory loss and no teeth. Who would want that? I didn't even want to make it to the age of twenty-five, because that meant you were half way up the hill and everyone knows that climb up is harder than the climb down.

"No I don't Jake. I don't want that. I don't want anything besides what I have right now. To me, this is perfect." I was lying through my teeth and he knew it. Jake was my confidant, the person I told everything to, no matter how gruesome and heartbreaking.

"Isabella Swan, you mean to tell me that you love the city of Forks and how everyone here knows too much about everyone else?" I made a mental note to thank him later for bringing up only the smallest of the complaints.

"Okay, okay you caught me. I don't love _everything, _just most of it. Besides, what is life if you can't hate something?"

"Touché."

"What do you think about school tomorrow? First day back in three months." I asked him.

"Ugh," he groaned, "School will be school." And that's all he had to say in the matter.

The conversation died after that. Being with Jake didn't require a constant stream of chatter like it did with some of my classmates. Life with him was so easy.

We sat there by the beach long after the sun had set. Neither of us had bothered to bring a cell phone. We were on our own.


End file.
